I am conducting some research and I am hoping that you will be able to help by sharing with me the activity we went through last year in Johannesburg, which taught us how to unlock and utilise our networks.
I am currently undergoing a course called Human Centred Design (by Acumen+ and IDEO.org) and as part of our design challenge we have decided to focus on helping young social entrepreneurs. We believe (and from the interviews we conducted) that to be a successful social entrepreneur you need to be able to unlock and utilise your networks.
Attached is a quick draft I just pulled together from what I remember from last year. Please can you share with me or connect me with someone who can explain how to conduct the workshop you executed at Jozihub. If not could we arrange a phone call to talk through the exercise, I just want to make sure I am capturing it properly. I need to present my solution in our next meeting on Wednesday.
Ok, so the post-its are just mechanics, you could be using a laptop (which actually would be better for documentation). The key thing is you need to do an inspiring and generative presentation of what you or others are working on, and it is better if the work actually is relevant and engaging to the individuals present, on a personal emotional level.
Introduce the topic- tell a story. Edgeryders is particularly effective because it is about people like the people in the room experimenting with unconventional/novel ways to address the kinds of problems people in the room face or care about. With little or no resources most of the time.
Get people to talk about what they care about, start them off discussing the contents of the presentation and relating to their own lives and work. Get people to write down observations or topics they are currently interested in or have noticed (one sentence questions or statements). Let them go on for a while till they have 3-4 statements/questions each. Get them to cluster the ones that “feel like they belong together” and label each cluster.
Have people break off into groups by self selection around clusters, one group per cluster or if many people choose a cluster split it into two or more groups/cluster. Have them discuss what they could/would like to do assuming no one else is coming other than the people in the group and that the only resources available are discussants time and skills. Let this discussion go on for a while.
Bring groups together in one big circle. End with collaboration mosaic (each person writes names of people they would turn to for help in a circle, then for each name you write qualities or skills or things they are especially good or unique at in an outer circle). Have people read their outer circles and then open floor to reflections and discussions about contents of the day, what was discussed what stuck out for them. Write follow up email asking people about their experiences and thoughts to post on the community platform.
That’s all. You can pick many many different exercises for the steps involved but now you understand what you are trying to get at and can pick effectively.